How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Civil War Reeanctments!

One thing I've never understood is Civil War re-enactors.

It's just a matter of taste, I guess, but I've never understood the appeal of LARPing (in slavish detail) one of our nation's greatest tragedies. I'm not criticizing those who participate--I just don't get it.

Well, I didn't get it. Now I do, thanks to Superboy!

One day in Smallville...

That all goes well enough. The following week, though, when Superboy is up in space:

But...

It's another Silver Age puzzle story!

Superboy and Alanis Morissette...

Anyway, after several pages of fruitless attempts to keep these doppelgangers from dying horrific deaths, Superboy comes across...

A space ship that goes "VROOOOMMM"?!?!

Uh-oh...this is a Silver Age story, after all. Cue the 1 1/2 pages of ridiculous exposition/explanation:

(SCIENCE!!)

Considering that another Superboy story from this same year featured a family of aliens who wandered the cosmos playing practical jokes, I feel like Mort Weisinger might have been quietly trying to build a Silver Age Elders Of The Universe for DC. Or he was just recycling story ideas...


Anyway, had I known that civil war enactments were actually war-games by retired alien generals using androids, I would have been on board all along. I mean, that is such a Doctor Who premise!!

From Superboy #143 (1967)